The Red Shoes
by GBlackwell
Summary: Post Series; a retelling of "The Red Shoes." They defied the tragic fates penned for them in their own tale, but what about the other stories Drosselmeyer wrote? What about the skeletal figure that dances without rest from town to town? Can they bring her a happy ending?


**A.N. The premise of this story is that, in the Princess Tutu universe, Drosselmeyer is the author of the story "The Red Shoes," or at least oenned a different version of it. You know, the story that served as the prologue to episode 9? That one. In our world, it is written by Hans Christian Andersen.**

**Anyway, here we go, hope you enjoy!**

* * *

_Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to dance very much. She loved dancing so much, that whenever she danced she forgot love and life, so caught up was she in her art. However, one day she put on a pair of red shoes that forced her to dance night and day without rest. It seems that the heavens thought this a fitting, ironic punishment for the girl who put her dancing before others, and so she danced and danced from village to village, so that mothers could point her out to their daughters and say, "Look, this is what happens to vain, proud little girls!"_

* * *

The dancer was called a demon by those who saw her. Some thought her to be an animated corpse dancing to the tune of Death's soundless violin; some thought she was doomed dancing from one town to another until Judgment Day comes. Those who saw her, however briefly, could not withhold a shudder. Her skeletal limbs performed each motion with a precise mockery of grace, so that she almost seemed to float without obedience to gravity. Her skin was pale, dull, and cracked with dryness around her hollow features. Most haunting of all were her eyes: whenever her the wind blew her matted hair from her face those who looked on where frozen with horror, for her eyes were as dull as those of the dead.

She danced without concern or awareness: She danced as smoothly upon rocks as she did upon water or through brambles and thorns. Her legs might snap from the strain or because some villager had grown frightened and attacked her, but she would dance on as though uninjured. Her dancing was that of a puppet's: no joy, no destination, no end.

Ah, what tragedy! What tragedy that one who had once taken so much joy in her art should be forced into a mockery of what it represented!

The dancer felt nothing. Though her eyes were open, she saw only a dark haze; though the winds blew icily in her face she felt not cold. Was there even life left in that pain-racked body? Was there a glimmer of consciousness behind those dead eyes, a flinch of recognition at the pains that surrounded her?

* * *

"_Qua-qua-quack!"_

"_What? What is it?"_

"_Quack!"_

"…_What…Is that... one of Drosselmeyer's stories come to life?"_

"_Quack?"_

"_Hm… Red shoes…"_

* * *

The girl had long since become unaware of her own aching limbs or the cold around her. Sensation and thought had long since passed away for her. Now there was only one idea ringing through the core of her being: That this was punishment, that it was her own fault.

Before, she had been aware of every aching muscle and every screaming tendon. Later, as she had danced further and further into the darkness, she had thought she had heard the voice of the old lady she had called "Mama" crying-

_Karen! Karen, where are you?!_

-but it was never above the volume of a whisper to her, and was gone as soon as it came. The girl became numb and filled with guilt.

Why guilt? An Angel of God had come from above to tell her this: that this was her punishment for vanity, for pride. This was her fate, her fate, her fate…

One of the towns threw rocks at her, stoning her. She neither saw nor heard them. Her muscles twitched at the pain, but only her body felt it. Her mind had long since become numb and darkened. The townsfolk thought they could somehow end the dance that haunted them, but she mindlessly spun and pirouetted through their streets.

She felt a slight buzz through the numbness: someone had gathered the courage to approach her and strike her across her head, knocking her down. But her limbs leapt up without a moment lost, continuing their motions.

How much longer could she dance? How would it be before she exhausted herself? She had danced so long, exhausting herself without nourishment or rest. In what little was left of her being, she knew it couldn't be long, couldn't be long until it was all over, and yet how long had she felt that?

There was no fate for her but this, is seemed God had ordained. Forever a puppet, forever dancing, forever in darkness, forever, forever, forever unreachable…

"Stop!"

A single word cut through her darkness like a beam of sunlight. But she did not have the wit or presence to respond: whatever awareness that light had brought her for a moment was quickly covered.

But the voice was persistent. "Don't go... please, don't."

The voice was like that of the old woman she had called "Mama:" strong but gentle. But it was different: younger, higher, and so full of hope that its ring caused a new spring of pain to well up in the dancing girl's breast.

"I want to help. Please open your eyes and look at me," the voice said.

She looked through the darkness and haze, and suddenly there was a princess—for it must have been a princess—before her: ethereal and delicate as though she were a creature made of light rather than flesh and bone. The princess's eyes were warm and kind, so much so that for a moment the demon dancer felt like a human being again.

She tried to open her mouth and talk to the princess, but her throat was so dry that only a croak came out, and again her muscles continued to dance: turning her away from the princess with the kind eyes.

"Please don't go," the princess repeated, leaping after her with the grace of a gazelle.

"Who… are you," she managed to choke out as her body danced without her permission.

"I am Princess Tutu," the princess replies, stretching out her hand, "Please, won't you dance with me?"

* * *

_The old man who was actually a dead man did a double take._

"_Princess Tutu?" he asked, "But how?"_

_The dead man's eyes narrowed. "That boy, hm? And after HE was the one to assure her that she was better as a duck! Well," he said, a grin spreading across his face, "You must know, little duck, that if you are Princess Tutu the same… constraints… apply."_

_The man's grin grew. "Toy with my tragic ending, will you, little duck? Well, we shall see exactly what a forgotten character from a tale that ended long ago can do… Oh yes, we will…"_

_His laugh echoed where no one could hear it._

* * *

"Princess Tutu," the demon dancer repeated.

"Yes," the princess replied. "Will you dance with me?"

"I cannot." The dancer continued her dance, her eyes closing, trying to shut out the image of the princess's gentle eyes.

"No, please," the princess said, dancing forward with open arms. "Please tell me why you suffer so. Why do you dance like this, even when you are clearly in such great pain?"

"My movements… are not my own," she replied, "Ever since I…"

"Ever since when?"

She could not remember when. Instead she said the one thing that resounded in her at every waking moment. "This is my fate, my punishment," she said. "Leave me be; this is what I deserve."

And with that, her body leapt away from the princess, fleeing her with speed and ferocity that was normally absent in her dancing. Her own wishes would have had her stay, though the princess's words awakened her to the pain that her body was in.

"That cannot be," the princess said, "I do not believe you could have done anything to deserve this fate. What makes you say that?"

She couldn't remember what it was she had done, so she said, "Vanity and pride. The Angel… the angel said this had to be my fate."

"And why do you believe that?" the princess questioned.

She tried to remember. She was turning, but for a moment she looked into the princess's eyes and felt the sudden memories of dancing as it once was to her: catching the eyes of everyone around her, being basked in admiration and compliments, the glow of realizing that she was _beautiful _as she danced, and that no one could take it away from her, not even the old woman that she called "Mama" with her disapproving glances.

"I danced," she said. Somehow she knew that was where she went wrong.

"What is so wrong with that?" the princess asked.

"I loved it so much," she croaked.

The princess's brow furrowed in sadness and sympathy. "What could ever make you think that that was so wrong?"

Every second she became more aware of how exhausted her legs and arms were. She wanted to rest, but they would not. Every moment her vision cleared a little bit and her senses came back to her. She was dancing in mud and rain, and her dress was torn to the point of being threadbare. She wondered for a moment how she looked, and realized with shame that she must have looked more like a dancing skeleton than a girl. She had always taken care of her appearance, wheedling the woman she called "Mama" to get her the latest fashions and spending an hour each morning simply on her hair. "Mama" had complained and recited Biblical verses about immodesty and vanity.

And then there were the red shoes. The red shoes she remembered seeing on the feet of a princess when she was younger…

"Please go away," she whispered.

"No," the princess said firmly, "I am here to help you; please… why would you think that taking joy in something is wrong?"

Tears dropped down her face, unbidden. Why did she think that? What had she done? She had danced so long in oblivion that it was hard to draw up the memories again. And then it came back: the night that she had put on the shoes and found that her movements were not her own.

"Mama was sick," she said, "I was supposed to take care of her, but there was a ball that night… I left her, I left her to go dance."

And she put on the red shoes, and was punished.

"That's why I deserve this," she said, "So leave me alone. Please… leave me…"

Men had to be evil to be punished. Girls just had to be vain.

The princess looked at her with sad eyes. "Is that truly what you believe?"

"Yes… the Angel said it, so… what I did was wrong."

The princess looked down, as though thinking. Then she looked up, "Yes, you have done wrong," she said, "But I do not believe what you have done warrants this. Surely, _surely _your deed was not so heinous, and you have long since repented of it, have you not?"

"Yes," she managed to say.

"And how will such a wretched fate help anything?" the princess asked, "Will submitting to this fate heal your mother? Will it help anyone that you are punished so? Will this suffering erase the deed?"

"No…" she said, hesitantly.

"And do you not think your mother is looking for you now? She probably—no, I am _sure _she loved you. And there must be others concerned by what has befallen you. Would it not be better, for you and for them, if you returned?"

The girl thought it was silly that the princess called the old woman her "mother" because Mama most certainly not. Mamas was… Mama was… she looked in the princess's eyes.

She was spinning, spinning, spinning and then-! Pain, warmth, tears, embraces. Her real mother had beaten her and left on the street when she drunk herself to death. Mama had taken her in, Mama had clothed her and hugged her and chided her for being vain and preached to her about sin and redemption. Mama was the one who had stayed up with her all night the night she had had a nightmare. But it hadn't been enough; she had wanted more, and dancing in front of adoring eyes had made her forget that she was a pauper off the streets. And the old woman had become a means to obtain pretty clothes at best and an annoyance when she objected to anything.

The girl fell to the ground, her dance disrupted. And then she sobbed into the earth, barely aware of the princess's gentle hands on her shoulder.

"There, now," the princess says, "You must make amends; 'punishment' is not amends, and you have suffered long enough, if you even needed to suffer at all."

She wanted to fall asleep right there, and wake up only when she was headed home. But the curse would not be beaten so easily. Again she leapt up, startling the princess. Her dance began again, madder and more ferocious than ever before.

"No," she murmured to herself, "I can't… stop. It's useless… I can never go home…"

"Do not think that way," the princess said, "You can; you can stop this now. Remember your true feelings and your own will. You can end this curse."

She tried halfheartedly. Nothing.

The princess began dancing. "Remember the people who were important to you: your mother… and surely you had friends?"

Her head dropped. She had had admirers, not friends.

"Everyone has people who love them, and people they love as well," the princess said, "Sometimes… we don't realize how much we love them at first, but when they're gone or we can't speak to them… we remember how precious they were. Even the smallest relationships, the ones of necessity or brevity, can be warm memories to us."

A shudder ran through her body. Faces came to her head. Yes, she had not really had friends. But there had been people who were kind to her, pleasant to talk to, people that she might have been friends with if she had been a little softer, a little less defensive about letting people in.

"And remember all that you used to live for. I am sure that when you danced freely, it was beautiful and that you got so much joy from it. You must have loved to move freely. You must have loved life. Now remember those feelings, and don't let them go!"

The girl struggled. Yes, she had loved life, she remembered. She had loved dancing and living and had been filled every moment with desperate, hedonistic joy. She had determined, she remembered, that there was no use being unhappy now that she had a supportive Mama and was living in a nice house with enough food. Once she would have scoffed at those who tried to shame her for loving dancing and despising Sunday mass.

She would be happy… and free.

She struggled. "These arms… are mine," she said. And with a harsh jerk, they were. But her balance was thrown off. She staggered, and caught a nearby tree to support herself. She clutched its bark, but her feet began dancing again, dragging her away.

"No, no, no…" she said, "Don't move…"

Her feet—no, the shoes—dragged her away from the trees. "Stop," she rasped powerlessly, "Stop. Help…"

The shoes dragged her through the mud and grass. She tried to dig her hand in the ground or entwine her fingers in the grass, but she only ended up with handfuls of mud or uprooted plants. They tried to get her to snap up, like she had before, but she resisted. Then, then seemed to give up making her dance to just pull her in a certain direct. She turned her head over her shoulder, and saw a lake.

* * *

"_The girl resists the fate she's been given," the man recounted, chuckling, "Only to have the cursed shoes drag her to a watery death in the Lake of Tears right as she seems to be able to break it through sheer force of will." _

_The eternal grin on his face couldn't get any wider._

"_Ah, a glimmer of hope followed by crushing despair! A fitting ending, I think, for such a miserable tale. What will you do now, my dear little duck, hm?_

* * *

"Don't… let me go…" the girl pleaded to the princess.

"I… won't."

The princess was holding onto the girl with all her strength, trying her best to halt the progress of the girl as the shoes tried to drag her to her doom. Every second, they inched a little closer, until the girl's feet dangled off the edge.

The girl's eyes glinted madly. A shard of glass had caught her gaze and she reached for it.

"What are you… doing…?" the princess asked.

"My feet…" she said, "they have to go."

"Wh-what?"

"Cut them off," the girl mumbled, "Cut them off."

"How could you say that?" the princess cried, and then addressed the sky. "Fakir! Do something!"

"I am a knight who could do nothing with his sword," echoed a voice the girl could not recognize, "What do you want me to do?"

"A knight?" the girl didn't see a knight anywhere, but she called out madly, "Please, cut off my feet with your sword! Then I can be rid of these cursed shoes and be free!"

There was a cabin by the lake of tears that the girl hadn't noticed before. It was from there that the knight emerged as grim as an executioner (But how was it that they had heard his voice before?) He exchanged glances with the princess for a moment, and then looked at the girl.

"Is that what you want?" the knight asked. "You would be fine living the rest of your life maimed and crippled?"

"No!" the princess cried, "Surely… there is another way…"

"There isn't!" the girl screamed, "I can't control these things… and no matter how many people have tried to restrain me with them…" memories of her early days under the curse caused her to shudder. "Just end it," she begged the man. "Please…"

The princess looked at her, and then the knight. The knight took a deep breath and raised his sword.

"If that is what you truly wish…"

The princess fainted from the sight of blood, and the girl fainted from blood loss. But the shoes plunged into the lake, and nobody died that night.

* * *

"_My, my, my," the dead man said, "That was rather… creative! Ah, the things that desperation will drive one toward!"_

_He set down his tea._

"_But are you so sure you have escaped tragedy, little vain girl? And what about you, Princess Tutu; what about you?"_

* * *

The girl woke up feeling strangely calm, despite every inch of her body screaming in pain. She saw the luminous eyes of the princess watching over her, and as she glanced around she saw the shadow of the man who had come to help them, except he quickly ducked out of the doorway, leaving her sight.

"You're Princess Tutu, right?" the girl asked, looking back at the princess.

"Yes," the princess said, nodding.

The girl closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said.

There was a long moment of silence. Then the girl asked, "I guess I'll… never dance again, huh?"

Princess Tutu shook her head sadly. The girl clenched her fist.

"It's fine," she said, "I'm alive, and I don't care about anything else. I'm going to see Mama again, and I'm going to be _happy."_ Tear filled her eyes. "Tell the man with the sword… that I thank him too. This is more than I ever hoped for."

"I will," the princess said.

The girl took a deep breath. "Where am I?" she asked.

"A house by the Lake of Tears," the princess said, "You should stay with us for a while… you need to recover, and it should take a few weeks. We can help you, and then we'll find your hometown and take you back, okay?"

She nodded weakly, more tears dripping down her face. "Yeah."

"I'm sure your mother will be happy to see you again," the princess said.

The girl looked uneasy. "You think so?"

"I'm sure."

The princess smiled, and the girl looked to the ceiling before closing her eyes. "Maybe," she said, "Maybe she will."

"Of course she will."

"I want to taste ice cream again," the girl said, "Mama and I used to eat strawberry ice cream together… and then I would have it with Emma and Peter… I wish… no, I refuse to wish for their forgiveness…" her eyes were hard, and her bony hands gripped the covers... "But I will make amends. I'll make it so that I've done all that I need to. But I refuse to be unhappy… if they won't forgive."

"Yes," the princess said, uncertain tears springing to her eyes.

"I refuse all unhappiness," the girl murmured, her hands still grasping the covers with the same strength that had grasped the edge of the cliff by the Lake, "Just happiness from now on. Just happiness, just happiness…"

She closed her eyes with a slight smile on her face. And never woke up.

Somewhere, miles and miles away from the Lake of Tears, was the girl's hometown. And in that town was a graveyard and in that graveyard a gravestone with her Mama's name engraved on it, along with gravestones bearing the names of everyone she had ever known. For you see, the girl had been dancing for a hundred years.

* * *

"_I guess I couldn't save her," Duck said, looking at the grave they had dug for the girl whose name they never even knew. "Why did she die? She was okay for a while, and seemed like she was doing fine…"_

"_She was emaciated and malnourished," her companion said, "and had danced beyond the limits of her strength. She would have died long before if Drosselmeyer's story hadn't doomed her to dance for all eternity. The story kept her alive so she could suffer more."_

"_So… all I could do was make her die. I couldn't give her a happy ending."_

_Fakir was silent for a while. Then, he said, "Don't say that. At least… she died with a smile on her face, all of her regrets behind her and her eyes looking toward the future. I think… I think that's the best way to die. At least it's better than being condemned to hell on earth for the rest of eternity."_

"_You think so?"_

"_...I'm sure. She was at peace at the end."_

_It was almost sunset. She turned to look at him, and said, "Maybe next time, we'll be able to spend more time together before the story ends. Maybe the person we try to help with live to see their family and live a long time afterwards."_

"_We'll try."_

_There was something Duck wanted to say before sunset, before she had to be gone until the next miserable person crossed their paths and she was given humanity for a brief period of time. But as she turned to him to say it, her body suddenly felt light._

"_Fakir-" was all she managed. And then, where once had been a girl, was a duck buried in a girl's clothes, a hoarse quack in her throat and tears in her eyes._

* * *

**About the ending: "The Red Shoes" is probably one of the most unfair stories ever written. Most of the unfairness in this little fic comes straight from the story, in which a girl is condemned to a living hell for being vain, wearing red shoes to mass instead of black ones, and leaving her sick mother one night to go to a ball. It's unfairness is worthy of a tale in Drosselmeyer's collection, so, yeah. I tried to give poor Karen a better ending, where she forgives herself rather than being reduced to a humble wreck of pious guilt and then "dying of happiness" in church. She still dies, but I think it's better this way. Tell me if you disagree; I love discussion.**

**So... in case anyone is confused, this is my theory about Duck becoming Princess Tutu again: Fakir is able to transform her whenever she sees a person in need of Princess Tutu, but she turns back into a duck once the story is over. **

**I may write more along the lines of "Fakir turning Duck into a girl again to help a poor character in a tragedy by Drosselmeyer." But I don't think they will end as miserably as this one did.**


End file.
